


how to disappear completely

by SadieFlood



Category: So Weird (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:49:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21845455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SadieFlood/pseuds/SadieFlood
Summary: Fi leaves home and loses her voice.Annie helps her find it.
Relationships: Fiona "Fi" Phillips/Annie Thelen
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	how to disappear completely

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LittleRaven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/gifts).



1\. 

"You were homeschooled, right?"

Fi is starting to dread the question. 

At first, she would respond enthusiastically: "Yeah, my teacher was an ex-biker turned roadie, and we traveled all over the country on my mom's tour, and I investigated the paranormal, I had a website where I would report--"

But no one here thinks her life story is cool or interesting. Just weird, and not in a good way.

Crop circles. Vampires. Mermen. Banshees. Clones. Even she has to admit that it all sounds like an elaborate, outlandish lie. A nerd with an overactive imagination. 

After a couple of months, she's learned that the question about homeschooling is meant to communicate one or more of the following:

_It really shows._

_Guess that's why your hair looks like that._

_Must be why you're so awkward._

"Yeah," she says, trying to sound cool. "I used to be."

The boy with floppy hair says, "That makes a lot of sense."

She misses Clu and Ned, and her mom, and everyone else, but this is what she wanted: a normal life. Not just for her, but for everyone back home.

Right?

*

She learns to keep her mouth shut about the past.

She closes down her website and stops responding to e-mails.

Eventually, she finds an acquaintance, who becomes a friend, and then another, and more after that.

None of them really know her. How could they? Not one would understand where she's been or what she knows. They're content to watch _The X-Files_ ; they don't need to live it. 

But they accept her as she is now, and that's good enough. She focuses on schoolwork and social rituals, and it all starts to become second nature.

"How are you really," her mother asks. In the background, she can hear Carey and Jack play-fighting about who's going to talk to her next.

"I'm good," she repeats. Strangely enough, it's true. 

"Your aunt tells me you're going to a football game tomorrow night. I'm glad you're getting out more, but that just doesn't sound like the Fi we know and love." 

She can hear Molly leave the kitchen, close herself up away from the boys. 

"I just don't want you to lose yourself, honey."

"I really am good," she insists. "Things are great. I'm just learning how to be a normal teenager and do safe, normal things."

"Oh, Fi," she starts to say.

"I'm growing up, Mom. You're supposed to leave behind childish things, right?"

She sighs. "Well, speaking of childish things, I think your brother called 'dibs' on the phone, so let me take you back to him."

"Actually," Fi says, "I have to run. But tell Jack I'll call him in a couple of days."

"A couple of _days_? Fi, I--"

Fi hangs up and tries to focus on her homework and not the sinking feeling in her stomach that her mom just might be right.

The phone rings again. She expects to hear her mom's voice, but instead it's a friend inviting her out.

Homework can wait.

*

She doesn't go home for Christmas. She would feel kind of bad about leaving Melinda and the twins, and her mom and Jack are snowed in, anyway.

When summer comes, she gets a part-time job at an ice cream parlor. 

The summer after that, she's stuck in a math class. 

The calls home become more and more infrequent, and it seems like no time has passed at all before she's standing on the stage at her high school graduation, with Melinda and the twins waving and whooping from the stands when her name is called.

No one from her old life is there, no one who could remind her of her childhood obsessions, of the bright curious girl she used to be. It would be difficult to recognize the old, dorky Fi in the perfectly ordinary 18-year-old girl posing for photos and giggling with her friends, anyway.

Not that they weren't invited. 

Jack joined the Peace Corps, which she supposes is a pretty good excuse for not coming to a graduation ceremony. 

Clu is in Santa Cruz doing God knows what. Eating, surfing, flirting, and sleeping, if she had to guess. 

Ned and Irene retired to Florida; he's in pretty bad health now so they couldn't travel. 

Her mother and Carey are touring to promote a stripped down, acoustic version of one of the old albums. No stops in Seattle.

Annie wrote her a nice e-mail rejecting the invitation (she's in Peru with her parents) but suggesting that they catch up. 

Fi smiles for every flashing camera. 

Maybe she'll send the photos home later.

And maybe she'll actually answer Annie's e-mail.

But not right now.

*

College is more of the same.

At first, anyway.

She's good at fitting in, telling everyone what they want to hear. The classes are more challenging than high school.

In the first semester of her second year, she chooses a creative writing course to satisfy an English requirement.

"Write what you know," her teacher says, over and over, ad nauseum.

She sits down to a blank page, and everything clicks into place.

***

2.

_ten years later_

Great. Another rejection e-mail.

Annie's been pitching freelance stories for a good six months with no success. You'd think editors would be more interested in stories about her fascinating travels and experiences, but apparently that doesn't attract clicks. If there are no clicks, they can't sell ads, and of course that's what really matters.

The e-mails are getting shorter and shorter. Eventually they'll just say, "You again?" 

Or maybe "Take the hint!"

She sighs and starts clicking around, because you can't write if you don't read. 

Then she sees it: a review of a new YA book by a mysterious, reclusive author whose real identity is unknown. She's mildly intrigued, until she gets to the plot summary.

_A nomadic teenage girl finds herself drawn deeper and deeper into the world of the strange and the unexplained. As she gets closer to unraveling the mysterious circumstances around her father's death, she just might find him -- and herself -- if she survives..._

Her brow furrows. 

A long time ago, Carey had told her a little about Fi's father and some things that happened before she left. 

She hasn't heard from Fi in a long time.

As far as she knows, neither has anyone else.

It couldn't be. Could it?

She opens a new e-mail and starts drafting a pitch. 

*

Annie likes technology as much as the next person who's not a total Luddite, but she does prefer calls to texts, face to face conversations instead of e-mails, real human connection instead of staring at a screen.

That's how she rationalizes the decision to drive from Los Angeles to Seattle, anyway.

She just hopes Fi hasn't moved since the last time they e-mailed. Annie had asked for her address to send some souvenirs from her last trip abroad, but she never actually made it to the post office. Just as well; now she has a box full of gifts rattling around in the backseat. A flimsy excuse is still an excuse.

Annie sits in the car for a good ten minutes practicing her explanation before she works up the nerve to knock on the door.

But when Fi answers, Annie just shoves the box of gifts into her hands and throws her arms around her.

"Wow. You haven't changed at all," Fi says. She's smiling; that has to be a good sign.

"Well, maybe a little." Annie touches her hair, a little self-conscious. She'd decided to cut it short when she got to L.A. Seemed like she might as well dye it red, too. New city, new career, new her. Sort of.

"I like it." Fi lingers in the doorway. She doesn't look too different from the day she'd given Annie the thumb ring. 

Annie wonders how long it'll take Fi to notice that she's still wearing it.

"Well, I'd invite you in, but, uh, I don't actually know what you're doing here."

Her practiced explanation goes out the window; she just can't keep herself from saying, "It's you, right? _Journey Into the Unknown_?"

"What? No way." 

"Ha! You didn't even have to ask what I meant." Annie grins. "You're just like Molly, you know. You can't lie. It's okay, I can't, either. Can I come in?"

"A, my mom can totally lie. B, so can I. C...  
fine," she says, and opens the door a little wider.

Annie decides to consider that a victory.

*

"You're still wearing that ring," Fi observes.

So it took her about five minutes.

"Yeah, it's been a lot of places with me." She twists it; a nervous habit.

Fi smiles, a little distant. "I haven't thought about it in ages."

That's a lie, too. "You were thinking about it when you wrote the book," she points out. "Shannon wears a ring just like it." 

Fi's eyes widen. "You read the book?"

"Uh, yeah," Annie says. "Loved it. Kind of lived it, for a while."

"Wow." Fi stands up and starts pacing. "I didn't think anyone I knew would ever see it."

"Well, I didn't tell anyone."

"If you write this story about me, everyone's going to find out."

Annie rolls her eyes. "I think you're overestimating your family's interest in my journalistic career."

"They'll be interested because it's about _me_ ," Fi says as if it's obvious, but then hastily adds, "And, I mean, I'm sure they read your stuff, too."

"What's the story there, anyway?" Annie decides to change the subject. "Why'd you stop talking to everyone?"

"I didn't," Fi protests. "I just have a life, you know?"

Annie looks around at Fi's tidy little house and decides not to say, _all evidence to the contrary_.

"Wasn't that the whole idea of me leaving?"

"Oh." Annie keeps her tone light. "I thought the reason might be that you and Shannon might have some common interests. Like, finding out what happened to your dad--"

"I gave that up," Fi insists.

"Or investigating paranormal occurrences and reporting them to her friends online--"

"I haven't done that in years."

"Or... dating girls?" 

Fi doesn't respond to that one. Bingo.

"But it's not like Molly would be weird about it," Annie says. "I mean, she wasn't weird about me. So I guess that can't be it."

Fi narrows her eyes. "What do you mean, she wasn't weird about you?"

"Wow," she says. "You really haven't talked to anyone in a long time, have you?"

"I guess not. So you're..."

"Into girls," Annie supplies. "Well, women. And the occasional guy. Not at the same time."

"Huh. What a coincidence. I mean, you and Shannon. But she's _not_ me."

"She moves around a lot. She has a protective older brother. She's journeying into the unknown." Annie ticks off each point on her fingers. "I mean, I suspected it was you before I even opened the book. By page 10, I knew it _had_ to be you."

"Do you think anyone else we know has read it?"

Annie shrugs. "Do you think anyone else we know spends a lot of time in the Young Adult section?"

That gets a laugh.

"Are you going to the christening?"

Fi looks at her blankly.

"Jack's new baby. Week before Christmas. Nothing?"

She hesitates. "Look, I was just protecting myself, and I was protecting everyone else from me. If I spent too much time thinking about them, or talking to them, it would just remind me of everything I had to leave behind. I couldn't be the person they knew if I wanted to get a life. I had to change."

"And... maybe you were afraid they'd reject you if they knew who you really were?" Annie raises her eyebrows expectantly.

Fi doesn't bite. "I'm not coming out on Buzzfeed or wherever this article is going to end up."

"But, off the record, I'm totally right, aren't I?"

"Is Jack still in Hope Springs?"

"Why, are you planning a trip?" 

"Why, do you want to be my date?" 

Annie smiles. "That's a yes, isn't it?"

Fi turns her attention to the box and starts rifling through it. "These are presents for me?"

"Yes," Annie says. "And you know I'm going to get an answer eventually, right?"

"You sure brought me a lot of stuff."

"Well, it built up over all the years that you weren't really answering my e-mails. Of course, now I know you were busy writing a bestseller."

Fi looks up from the box. "You can't tell anyone about that if I go to this thing, okay?"

"My lips are sealed," Annie says. "For now."

***

3\. 

Fi's a little surprised that Annie holds up her end of the deal.

Being home again after so long feels like she's visiting her childhood, frozen in amber. Molly looks the same, just a little greyer around the temples. Carey, too. Clu looks like a kid wearing his father's suit; it might actually _be_ his father's suit.

Jack, on the other hand, looks like a full-fledged grown-up, with a wife and a family. A normal life, she supposes, and it'll probably work out better for him than it did for her.

Afterward, a few of the guests are hanging around in Jack's impeccably landscaped backyard, where her mom is performing a ballad off her last album with Carey's accompaniment. They still sound great together, but the song is an unbearably sad story about a lost girl. Fi supposes that it's probably about her.

She's almost on the verge of tears when she notices a girl standing on the fringes of the small crowd, a petite blonde with her hair in plaits, looking fondly at her family. She looks like she belongs, but Fi's pretty sure she's only ever lived in her imagination.That can't be right.

Fi nudges Annie. "Who's that?"

Annie follows her gaze to the blonde and shrugs. She sidles up to Clu and returns to Fi a few minutes later to report, "He said, and I quote, 'Who are you talking about? I don't see anyone.'"

"He might not be the most reliable source," Fi points out. "Was he, you know..." She mimes smoking a joint.

"High on life?" 

She rolls her eyes. "You know what I mean."

"Maybe, but I also asked a couple of other people, who looked at me like I was crazy. And then"--she pauses for effect, thrusting her hand in Fi's face--"I noticed this."

Her old ring is glowing.

"That hasn't happened in ages," Annie says, wide-eyed.

An old, familiar thrill surges through her, but she tries to keep her expression neutral and her voice calm. "If we want to know who she is, maybe we should just ask her. She doesn't look angry or dangerous. She looks... peaceful."

"She looks," Annie starts to say, then hesitates. "She actually looks a _lot_ like how I pictured Shannon when I was reading your book."

"Ix-nay on the ook-bay," Fi hisses. "And I'm sure that's just a coincidence. So come on." She grabs Annie's hand and leads her to the blonde.

"Are you Shannon Cain?" Annie blurts out before Fi can ask a more rational question.

"I am. Have we met?"

"Wait," Fi says. " _What_ did you say your name was?"

Just like that, time freezes, and the answer becomes clear.

"Now, don't tell me you've forgotten all about the good times we used to share," the blonde says. "All the games we played, all the fun we had. I've missed you, little duck."

Fi's entire body goes rigid. "I got _rid_ of you."

"That was a long time ago," she says. "Things change. Loved your book, by the way. Though I didn't think your portrayal of me was exactly fair."

"What do you want from me? I'm not looking for answers anymore. I've stayed away."

"And now you're back." She smiles. "We have unfinished business."

"No, we don't," Fi says. "Our business was done a long time ago. I trapped you on that disk and then I destroyed it. I'm _out_. Whatever you're hiding, whatever you want me to know or don't want me to know, _I don't care_."

"Oh, little duck, you really believe that. But whether our business is finished or unfinished is not up to you. Why don't you stick around and find out what I have in store?"

She opens her mouth to answer just as time starts moving forward again, and the blonde is gone.

"Whoa, where did she go?"

Molly has finished her set and is chatting with an older couple Fi doesn't know. When she sees Fi marching toward her with Annie in tow, she excuses herself and waits.

"Mom, I want to stay with you for a while, if you'll have me. There's a lot of things I want to tell you. I thought I was doing the right thing for everybody, but I think I might have been wrong, and I'm sorry. Can I stay?"

Molly regards her for a long moment, and Fi's stomach drops. 

Then she wraps her arms around Fi and pulls her close. "I knew you'd come back," she says into Fi's hair. 

Annie lingers on the sidelines, still a little confused.

"Why don't both of you girls stay for Christmas? And longer, if you want."

"I'd like that," Fi says.

That night, she finds herself alone in Jack's backyard after everyone has gone in and started saying their goodbyes. Jack's been cold to her all day, and she doesn't blame him; they don't really know each other anymore. Maybe extending her visit will help change that.

Annie joins her, eventually. "You okay?"

She nods.

"I still don't exactly understand what happened earlier, but I hope you know I'm always going to be here to help." She takes off the ring and holds it out to Fi. "I think this was always yours."

"Thanks for keeping it for me," Fi says. "And thanks for keeping my secret."

"Don't you mean secrets? Plural?"

"You're still on that, huh?" Fi shakes her head. "Guess I should give you an answer."

Annie looks ready to gloat.

Fi kisses her, soft and slow, and everything clicks into place.

"Wow. Guess I can't put that in the story."

"It would probably make you look pretty unprofessional."

"Darn," Annie says, and kisses her back. 

If Bricriu's back, that means everyone is in danger again. Leaving again might save them, or it might leave them vulnerable at the worst possible moment.

This time, she'll stay and fight. 

And she won't be alone.

She can hear her mom and Carey talking and laughing, Clu arguing with Jack at top volume, the baby crying and being soothed by Jack's wife, who she's barely even met.

She takes Annie's hand and heads inside.


End file.
